


Mutants and Mutants: Illyan Arrives

by Ecarden



Series: Mutants and Mutants [1]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29543754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ecarden/pseuds/Ecarden
Summary: Bad luck brings Simon Illyan to a place where mutants are still being hunted. That's a problem. In a lot of ways.
Series: Mutants and Mutants [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172486
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14





	Mutants and Mutants: Illyan Arrives

Chapter 1: Illyan Arrives

Simon Illyan did not drink. He’d never been a big drinker, but the eidetic memory chip put in his head at twenty seven had put an end to drinking as recreation. It was no fun at all when you had a crystal clear video and audio recording of every stupid thing you’d done while drunk. Even if he hadn’t done anything stupid, drinking enough to get any visual effects made him nauseous as his faulty vision fought with the perfect clarity of the real-time recording.

Simon Illyan did not use drugs. They were an off-world indulgence no prole who wanted to serve in the Imperial military could possible afford, either literally or figuratively. Also, anything that loosened his control over his tongue, or his sense of reality was to be avoided. There were too many secrets in his head.

This was a long way of saying he was relatively certain he was not hallucinating. He hadn’t touched anything which would allow a contact poison and most aerial toxins wouldn’t make it through the nose filters he wore as a matter of course. He checked the chip, there was no blank in his memory. 

One frame he’d been in the allegedly secure 5-space research facility, directing the evacuation (though he really should have been leading the evacuation). The next he was in a warehouse of some sort, surrounded by metal containers and looking at a pair of men in primitive black and dark green body armor, holding some sort of long guns in their hands, one aiming at a child on the floor, the other aiming at him and yelling in oddly accented English. Fortunately, despite some odd vocabulary and odder accents, his knowledge of Galactic Standard English and Barrayaran English was enough to let him understand.

He focused on the weapons for a moment, and the chip identified them as a variety of slug-thrower he’d seen in a security briefing thirty years ago about weapons so primitive modern Beta Colony weapon scanners wouldn’t pick them up, so long as you properly sealed the rounds against chemical sniffers. 

The soldiers had an insignia on each shoulder and on the armor over their hearts. Three letters, stacked vertically, MRD. The chip offered sixty-three separate organizations which used that acronym throughout the Nexus. This was not any of them, he was certain of it. He blinked away the list. The soldier was screaming at him to get his hands up and screaming at the child to uncurl and put her hands on the ground.

Illyan noted that they were soldiers and he was still wearing his dress greens. They were fire resistant, and provided some insulation from stunner fire, none at all against a nerve disrupter and minimal protection from a needler. How they would hold up against the slug-throwers he honestly didn’t know. Of course, it might not matter if they shot him in the face. He tallied his other resources. Formally on duty guarding the emperor he was fully equipped, a plasma arc holstered on one hip, the nerve disrupter and stunner on the other. Those were his visible weapons. Three knives (one vibra, two unpowered), another stunner, several power packs for all his weapons. The small field medkit in the small of his back. The comm on his wrist, which showed no signals in range. The anti-surveillance gear on his belt.

He let a slight frown show. Illyan liked to be bland. It was a point of pride for him that despite being one of the most feared men in twenty wormhole jumps, he could openly attend an Imperial function without anyone except his own agents noticing, or remembering, his presence unless he wanted them to. He forced his voice to become the voice of command, “Identify yourself, soldier.”

His voice cut through the yelling in the room, low and straightforward. The trained response took over, “Special Agent Wood, Mutant Response Division,” the man’s expression was hidden by the helmet and balaclava he wore, but Illyan could almost see him shake it off, “Identify yourself!” 

Illyan ignored him and turned to face the child, not coincidentally putting one of his hands out of the line of sight of the soldier who was still pointing a gun at him. “Which would make this the mutant?” he asked, voice still soft, but both soldiers had stopped yelling now, rather confused by the situation.

One benefit of the chip he didn’t mention often was that its recording included his peripheral vision, which was rather clearer than his own brain could make it. He saw the moment the soldiers looked at each other and his hand moved. The stunner shot took the one holding a gun on him in the head, stunner nimbus flaring. The other man tried to turn, but was so startled by the energy blast that he didn’t react fast enough to beat Illyan’s second shot. 

Illyan stepped forward, this area was mostly hidden by the crates, there was only one way in, or out. The child looked up, female, dark skin, part-way through puberty. He moved automatically to guard the entrance. “How many are there?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” her voice was shaking, but she answered the question, which got her some points. “A lot. They surrounded the entire building and came in everywhere. Mom told me to hide and—“

“What planet is this?” he interrupted.

She stared at him like he was crazy, which he did not see, because he was watching down the narrow corridor between the boxes. 

“Earth.”

He paused for a moment. “Ah,” he glanced at the unconscious agents. “Well, in that case, what city is this?”

“San Diego,” her voice drew his attention as the barely suppressed panic was turning to confusion. 

Barrayaran assets on Earth were centered around the embassy in London. But, he glanced at his comm again. It was secured, but still should have been detecting signals. Besides, Earth might often be anachronistic but their militaries used standard equipment, not slug-throwers. And, his eyes flickered slightly as he remembered a speech by Emperor Ezar, condemning off-world interference when a group of protestors from Earth had shown up to attempt to petition the Emperor to ban the infanticide of mutants, apparently failing to understand that they had no right to petition the emperor for anything.

He considered the gear and the lack of signals. “Where’s the nearest shuttleport?” he asked, even as the chip dropped a map of San Diego in his head. He tended to fill travel time with memorizing trivia like that. 

She stared at him like he was crazy and this time he was watching to see it. He frowned.

“What’s a shuttleport?” she asked. No child of Earth could be so ignorant. Now. 

He restrained a frown. “What year is this?” he asked.

“2003,” her eyes widened. “Are you a time traveler?”

“Not by choice.”

Her eyes widened still further and she looked down, guilt plain on her face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was so scared. I just wanted help and then…”

He kept his voice level, forcing himself not to show any disbelief, though a nagging voice in the back of his head said ‘Terrence-C’ and ‘haut.’ An even older and smaller voice said, ‘magic’ and ‘ghosts’ and ‘god.’ “You brought me here?”

“I mean…I’ve never done it before, but other stuff…I mean…”

“The MRD, what will they do if they catch you?” he asked.

“No one knows,” she whispered. “Mutants just…disappear and never come back…and…”

His eyes narrowed. “So we need to escape,” he stated the obvious to calm and divert her. “We’ll need transportation. I doubt I can use any vehicle here. Can you?”

“I can’t drive,” her voice rising in panic, suddenly there was a flash and her brain re-engaged, “but my parents can!”

“Where were they?” 

Her eyes flickered. “Out the tunnel, then right, there were more soldiers coming.”

For a moment he thought. Removing the soldiers had been based on their threats and the presence of a child. It would be difficult to walk back future violence. Still, that was what a stunner was for. Walking back from stunning people was a lot easier than walking back from killing people. 

The girl’s belief that she summoned him was obviously insane, this was a 5-space accident, nothing more. Still, there might well be a reason he was dumped out here, and now. And besides, he did not particularly care for soldiers who terrorized children on the basis of mutation. It could even be argued that such an act was contrary to the Edict on Mutation, though it would be difficult to argue that Old Earth a millennia ago was within Emperor Gregor’s jurisdiction. On the other hand, Illyan was there and therefore so was the will of the Emperor.

He nodded to the girl and moved quietly down the tight pseudo-corridor, stunner in his hand. When he reached the end, he knelt, knees protesting, and looked out from down around the floor, stunner peeking out as well. 

The corridor was clear in both directions. He moved off in the one she’d indicated and found her parents on the ground, hands restrained with some sort of metal rather than tangle-cuffs. Another soldier, also wearing the ‘shoot me in the heart’ insignia over his heart. Illyan took a moment to check the cross corridors silently, after signaling the girl to wait. He shot the man in the head from behind and caught the body, lowering it down almost silently and briefly meeting the eyes of the girl’s mother. A step brought him behind her and the vibra-knife that appeared in his hand cut through the metal that bound her bracelets together. “How many soldiers?”

“At least a dozen,” the woman said.

“Any other prisoners?”

“Two other families, somewhere in here,” she answered as she got up. Her husband was already running to his daughter, catching her up into a too-noisy hug and even noisier reunion. Illyan moved into a flanking position in time for the noise to draw another guard who likewise went down to the stunner. His frown was enough to silence father and daughter. 

“Which way to the nearest exterior wall?” he asked quietly. 

Her answer was covered by a massive explosion from the north. Illyan ruthlessly suppressed his instinct to run towards the explosion. “Lead the way to the exterior wall that way,” he told the woman, pointing away from the explosion. He passed the second stunner to the husband and put him in the rear-guard position, with the girl sandwiched between the two of them.

Two more soldiers who succumbed to their instincts went down to stunner fire as they ran towards the explosion right into the group. The third non-civilian person he saw was a massive blue fuzzy creature. Almost the size of Sergeant Taura, if rather fuzzier, he (for it was, rather visibly male) still went down to a stunner shot after bounding around the corner.

Illyan cursed to himself, he’d run right into the flanking attack of whomever had caused the explosion. Rather doubting that it was only one, his left hand fell to the nerve disrupter and pulled it from its holster, aiming at the fallen creature, a snapped command had the husband watching the corridor they’d just run down, then he raised his voice to be heard by the creature’s companions. “Come out, or I’ll kill your companion.”

Two more figures stepped around the corner, a redheaded woman in green and gold and a man in a blue body-suit, almost a nerve-disrupter shield net, his eyes covered by a visor. “Identify yourselves,” he ordered.

“Cyclops,” the man said, his hands seemingly raised, but his body language said he was preparing to strike and they were near the visor around his eyes.

“If you twitch, I will shoot you in the head,” Illyan said. His hands froze.

There was a moment of silence, then the woman spoke, “Why can’t I read your mind? What are you? They don’t know either? What is going on?”

“Telepathy and gene-editing needed to create the shock trooper…are you sure this is 2003?” 

“Yes. And we’re the X-men. We’re here to get these people out of here, before the MRD takes them,” Cyclops said.

Alternate universe, not time travel, Illyan noted to himself, relaxing slightly as he realized he could act without fear of paradox. Of course, since he was operating off a few barely remembered pre-chip novels and one perfectly remembered paper (which had not turned out to be a coded message to Cetegandan agents and instead was just an almost incomprehensible paper) that wasn’t a major fear.

“There are two more families in here,” the mother pointed out.

“We trust them then?” Illyan asked, deliberately casting himself as part of the group. 

“Of course!” the girl darted around him, nearly prompting an unfortunate reaction. “They’re the X-men! They’re heroes! Mutants who help people and teach other mutants how to help people! They’re the best!”

Illyan caught the word ‘teach’ and holstered his nerve disrupter, though he kept the stunner out. “That’s nice. We need to leave.”

Cyclops’ hands fell and he knelt, one hand falling to his companion’s chest and feeling it rise and fall and his heart beat. He slapped the other…mutant, but the man remained unconscious. “How long will he be out?”

“Depends on his metabolism. Up to half-an-hour. Then he’ll have a very unpleasant stunner hangover,” at least if he wasn’t given Synergine and Illyan wasn’t using one of the four doses of the drug in his medkit on a random stranger. 

The woman, who still hadn’t given her name lifted a hand and he found himself floating into the air, arms locked in position. He still had control over his hands, but with his arm locked in position it would be hard to target either of them. Not impossible, because he could angle his wrist properly, but it would not be easy.

“What are you? And why can’t I read your mind?” the woman repeated.

Illyan shifted his gaze to her. “I am Captain Simon Illyan, Barrayaran Imperial Security. There are any number of possible explanations, depending on the nature of your powers. Now, there are two more families to save and you’re down a man already. Are you going to complete your mission, or interrogate me?” his voice was dead level. 

Cyclops stepped towards her, but her eyes narrowed, ignoring her teammate. Her left hand moved and a tiny blade flickered from her waist and sliced right under his eyes, drawing a line of blood. “Not a robot, just robotic, fine,” she frowned at the approaching Cyclops and dropped her hands, dropping Illyan in turn, “let’s go.”

Illyan dropped about five feet, landing with every appearance of ease, even as his knees screamed abuse at him. Cyclops spoke into a hidden microphone and they moved out with a warning that another of their group would be along to collect Beast and lead them out.

A moment later a younger man appeared, literally made of ice, red and black material covering his torso and groin. He was, creatively, named Iceman. This was the first thing Illyan had seen which was not duplicable by modern science. Beast was just Taura, but in blue; the lift could be done by a tangle or anti-grav field; telepathy (even assuming it was real) could be that Cetegandan nonsense; Ice-covered men who created ice in clear violation of the laws of thermodynamics, then used it to slide giant blue-furred men out of warehouses was new. He kept himself from visibly reacting, however. 

The man led them to a primitive aircar, which they piled into. Illyan reclaimed his stunner and took up a guard post, freeing Iceman to go assist his companions. While he stood there, he did his best to subtly interrogate the family. There were apparently, three major threats to mutants in this world. Various non-mutant hate groups, the MRD, and a group known as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The first murdered mutants, the second arrested mutants and the third conscripted mutants. 

The significant threat, however, seemed to be the MRD. The girl’s powers, assuming their existence, might have intersected with his accident to result in his presence, but she had no idea how to get him back and it would be a long time before that changed, if it changed. Which meant her security was the priority. Attempting to run a one man security detail was a recipe for failure. Which meant…

Beast jerked awake after less than five minutes. His metabolism must be impressive. After that, Illyan’s interrogation shifted to the training and protection of Diana (as that was apparently the girl’s name). He impressed upon the larger man the importance of ensuring Diana’s safety. He’d just finished when a shorter, grubby man, with bloody claws extending from his fists, appeared, leading another handful of rescuees. After that, it was simply a matter of making sure he was left behind, which was easy enough. There was a gaggle of civilians and retreating X-men, so all Illyan had to do was that peculiar unfocusing of himself and move with that certain sense of purpose which let him fade into the background.

The others didn’t even notice he was gone, except for the woman on perimeter duty who literally flew down to land in front of him. Her outfit was black and daringly cut, swirling around her like her oddly white hair. Lightning crackled around her hand and his stunner came up to point at her, in turn. 

“And where are you going?” she asked, her accent different from that of the others.

He considered her. “Where I need to be, in order to ensure Diana’s survival until she has the skills needed to return me home, so I may resume my duties.”

She considered that for a long moment, then stood aside and Illyan moved back into the warehouse, pausing only to fiddle with his equipment, take a moment, breathe, and accept that this was really happening (though he obviously wouldn’t be saying anything about ImpSec secrets, in case it wasn’t really happening). Then he walked into the warehouse and began dragging unconscious soldiers around and patching up the few survivors of the rampaging X-Men. This was going to be a long day.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always welcome.


End file.
